Mary Ann Aldersey (24 June 1797 - 1868) was the first Christian missionary woman (married or single) to serve in China proper (excluding Macau & Hong Kong, where Henrietta Shuck had been working earlier). She founded a school for girls in Ningbo, Zhejiang. Her pioneering the field of mission work for single women in China was the most remarkable outcome of her life.
Mary Ann Aldersey was born on June 27, 1797, in the Hackney London, England.[1] Aldersey was a native of London from a wealthy nonconformist family. Aldersey’s father, Joseph, was considered a social leader amongst the small episcopal congregation of Dr. John Pye Smith. Aldersey joined the congregation as a member at the age of twenty-one and worked as the financial secretary of the Ladies’ Bible Association. When Aldersey’s mother, Elizabeth, died in 1822, Aldersey was required to fulfill twice her usual domestic duties.
In 1824, Robert Morrison moved to East London and taught English women who were interested in missionary work (usually as partners to their husbands)[2] to speak and read Chinese.[3]
She studied Chinese under Robert Morrison in London when he was on home leave from 1824 to 1826. Also in attendance were Samuel Dyer and his wife Maria Tarn. The friendship that she forged with Maria eventually led to her inviting their orphaned teenage daughters to work with her in China. In London, Aldersey was still attached to family ties, but she made gifts to the London Missionary Society that enabled Maria Newell to go to Malacca (1827), where Newell met and married pioneer missionary Karl Gützlaff.
In 1837, she herself was able to go to Surabaya, where she started a school for Chinese girls. When the treaty ports in China were opened (1843), she moved to Ningbo, where she opened a school for girls assisted by three teenagers: Mary Ann Leisk, Ruth Ati, and Christiana A-Kit. Ruth Ati and Christiana were from Surabaya. Never an agent of any missionary society, Aldersey did maintain close links with the London Missionary Society. In 1848, William Armstrong Russell and Robert Henry Cobbold arrived from England. Several of her teaching staff were Chinese-speaking daughters of missionaries; at least four became missionary wives, including Burella Hunter Dyer, who married John Shaw Burdon, and Maria Jane Dyer, who married James Hudson Taylor in 1857 (against Aldersey's wishes). Another protegee, Mary Ann Leisk, became the wife of William Armstrong Russell, who was later a bishop in north China.
In 1861, Aldersey handed her school over to the Church Missionary Society and retired to Australia, where she lived until her death. She retired to McLaren Vale, South Australia in 1861 and built a house (Tsong Gyiaou) named after a former preaching station. The name is an anglicised form of 'San Ch'iao' (pronounced 'Song Jow'). It is now part of the Southern Districts War Memorial Hospital.